Harvey Bernstein, a CCE Tenured Professor at Pratt Institute in New York, is teaching Furniture Design and Graduate Design 4 studio in the FIU Department of Interior Architecture.
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ernstein’s motto for this course is, “Don’t become tools of your beautiful tools!” Through Furniture Design and Graduate Design 4 studio, Bernstein wants his students to focus well on the design and direct experience created by the tools and the object of creation, more than on the tools and objects themselves. His students are emphasizing the designer’s process language, which includes allowing for a rough draft of an idea and creating and evaluating multiple, quick pre-prototype ideations through sketching and modeling. One class exercise has required the students to make four models in one hour.
“Traditional design thinking can be overly convergent and object focused,” said Bernstein. “Our design thinking should be divergent, inclusive and interdisciplinary.”
Harvey Bernstein graduated from Pratt Institute with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1964. Since then, he has taught at the New School for Design at Parsons, as well as Pratt Institute. He has also worked as a designer at R. Gersin Associates, as a senior designer at Gagnon Valkus, as executive designer at Unimark International, and as vice-president at Genesis Design Inc. He has been a consultant at Landor Associates, Chermayoff and Geismar, and Pentagram, and he is currently president of Bernstein Design Associates (BDA).
Bernstein has also presented at the International Design Conference (ICSID) in Nagoya, Fukui and Osaka, Japan. He has conducted lectures at the NY Japan Society, the Philadelphia College of the Arts, Miami University of Art and Design, and Florida International University. He has also served as the chair of the Industrial Designers Society of America, NYC chapter. His work has been exhibited at MoMA, the Cooper Hewitt Museum, Gallery 91, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, (AIGA), and the Art Directors Club, and he has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, Interiors Magazine, Interior Design Magazine, Architectural Record, Domus, and Abatare.
Among the awards he has won are four Interiors Magazine Awards for Retail , Office, and Exhibit Design (twice in the “Retail” category), the Gold Award for Product and Silver Award for Exhibit from Industrial Designers Society of America, a Roscoe Award for Furniture Design, the Best Space award at the New York Design Center, and a Lumin Award for Lighting from the Illuminating Engineering Society of America.
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